She looked at the first room she passed—room A101. She was close. She walked past another section of lockers and glanced at the rooms to her left and right. A104 was on the left. Taking a deep breath, she walked in.
The room was oddly silent. Ten other children, her age, sat at long wooden tables inside. She found an empty seat near the back, next to a densely freckled boy tapping out a rhythm on the table with his pencil.
The bell rang. An older woman with gray, curly hair and a chunk missing from her eyebrow strode in. She wore the Hearkener uniform: a black trench coat, buttoned up to her throat, and gray pants. Darya leaned to the side to see what color the woman’s implant was. Red. That meant she heard life songs rather than death songs.
The woman cleared her throat, though there was no reason to—no one was talking.
“Hello,” she said. “Let’s not bother with introductions. Oh, except me. We go by surnames here, and mine is Hornby. I’ll be giving you the rundown of Hearkener history.”
Darya knew the basics—that the Hearkener implant had something to do with string theory, and what it did was channel the vibrations of the human body somehow and make them into music. But she felt strangely exposed, without knowing more.
“String theory became widely accepted in the early part of the century,” Hornby said. “Can anyone tell me what string theory is, basically? Yes—how about you—what’s your name?”
The boy next to Darya had raised his hand. “Christopher Marshall, ma’am.”
“‘Hornby’ will do, Marshall. Go ahead.”
“String theory is the theory that subatomic particles like electrons and quarks are one-dimensional strings instead of three-dimensional, and that the one-dimensional strings form the fabric of the universe.”
“Good,” said Hornby. “Also, the strings are constantly vibrating. That’s important to remember because when Dr. Rogers created the first implant, all it did was channel the vibrations and their various frequencies and translate them into music. It was her successor, Dr. Johnson, who refined the implant to filter out all frequencies but those of human cells, so it was only people who made music. Anyone want to tell me why he would do a thing like that? You, there—your name . . . ?”
“Samanth—uh, I mean Brock,” a girl in the front row said. “He said he just wanted to see if it was possible.”
“In fact, that is what he said, but we have since determined it was so he could hear the music his dying wife made.” Hornby added, “He had a friend try out the implant so that she could transpose the music. She was the first Hearkener. But the implants didn’t stop there.”
Here she paused and tapped the red dye on her temple with her index finger.
“The last developer of the implant discovered that he could filter out either the vibrations of decaying cells or the vibrations of regenerating cells. In other words, he could make the implant play the sound of a person’s life or the sound of their death. For a long time, hardly any Hearkeners chose death. Now that death is so common, those Hearkeners are in high demand.”
Darya remembered the look the Hearkener who had heard her father’s death song had given him. She had seemed almost bewitched by it. Darya didn’t think that woman had chosen the death songs because they were in higher demand.
Hornby clapped her hands. “Now that that’s out of the way, I would like to call each of you up so that I can listen to your life song and tell you what instruments it seems to include. Not, by the way, that a life song actually incorporates instruments. It’s just that certain sounds remind us of them. Anyway—this is important because you will be selecting two of the three instruments you are required to master in your first year here. Much of your time will be spent trying out each of them to see which ones you gravitate toward. Hopefully my evaluation will steer you in the right direction.”
It had been a very brief history lesson. Darya sat in her seat with her hands clutched around the edge of the chair as each of the eleven children in the class walked up to the front of the room so Hornby could listen to them. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to let that woman analyze her. She didn’t know why, but it felt far too personal, far too intimate for a setting like this.
It wasn’t long before Hornby pointed to her and bent her finger, beckoning Darya forward. Darya got up—too fast; she knocked the chair over and had to set it right again—and walked to the front of the room, her hands fidgeting at her sides. When she stood right in front of Hornby, the woman asked her, “Your name?”
“Darya Singh,” she said.
“Singh.” Hornby laughed a little. “Well, that’s convenient. Let me listen to you for a bit.”
Hornby focused her attention on Darya’s face, though she wasn’t exactly looking into Darya’s eyes. She stared for a few seconds, and then a few more seconds . . . and then Darya became aware that Hornby had been staring at her for much longer than she had stared at anyone else . . . and then Hornby rocked onto her heels, as if something had blown her backward.
“My goodness,” she said quietly. Then she seemed to come to her senses and said, more briskly, “I hear . . . violin, cello, piano, some voice, trombone, trumpet, drum . . . there are more, but those are the dominant instruments.”
She leaned a little closer to Darya’s face, so that Darya could see a dart of blue in her otherwise green eyes.
“I’ve never heard so much dissonance in a life song before,” she said quietly, so that only Darya could hear.
And that was the beginning of Darya’s education as a Hearkener.
“When do you get the implant?”
Darya stabbed a piece of lettuce with her fork. After seven years at Hearkener school, she had passed the final test, an achievement half of her class hadn’t managed. And all Khali wanted to know was when she would get to work. But that was Khali—all work and no play.
“A week from tomorrow,” she said.
“Oh.”
“It’s soon, I know.”
Khali frowned. “What?”
“A week. It’s hardly enough time to determine my entire future.”
Khali’s expression was still blank. Darya felt like she had started speaking another language without meaning to. She raised her eyebrows at her older sister.
It was midday, but the windows were boarded up, so it felt like night in the kitchen. Wood wouldn’t keep the infection at bay if someone set off a bio-bomb nearby, but it was better than nothing. The battery-operated lantern on the table glowed orange, with fake flickers so that it imitated fire.
Khali lived with their mother now, in their childhood home. Darya had stopped coming back during the holidays three years before, and now only saw Khali when they went out to eat, or when she was sure her mother would be asleep.
“I don’t understand,” Khali said. “What decision needs to be made?”
“The decision.” Darya scowled. “You know—life songs or death songs? It’s a huge choice. It changes everything.”
“But you’re going to choose death songs,” Khali replied tersely. “Right? Because you want to record Mom’s song before it’s too late. Right?”
Darya pushed the piece of lettuce around her plate.
“She’s only got a few weeks left if she doesn’t get the transplant. At most, Darya.”
Darya did know.
“She won’t get another Hearkener! We don’t have enough money as it is!” Khali was shaking her head. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t do this for her. I can’t believe you.”
Darya looked up, her lips pursed.
“I can’t believe you,” she said. “She’s already controlled my life enough; I’m not going to let her control the rest of it too!”
“What do you mean? She hasn’t controlled you.”
“What little childhood we had she took from us,” said Darya. “Kids aren’t supposed to think, ‘Oh, Mommy’s drunk again, so I’d better stay away from her.’ Kids aren’t supposed to take care of their parents. We’ve done enough for her.
I’m not doing this for her.”
Khali’s mouth was open, but she wasn’t saying anything. She just looked stunned.
Then she said, “You’ve only met the real her a few times, Darya. The woman you know is just the alcohol, stifling her.”
“The implant isn’t something you can undo, Khali. You choose death, you choose it forever. You can’t tell me it’s my duty to choose something just because our shitty mom is finally getting what was always coming to her.”
Darya clutched the edge of the table, waiting for Khali to scream at her, or call her names, or something. But Khali’s eyes just filled with tears, and her lower lip started to wobble.
“Then . . .” She gulped. “Don’t do it for her. Do it for me, so I can hear. . . . She’s the only parent I . . . Please, Darya.”
Darya carried her plate to the sink and scraped the remnants of her salad into the garbage disposal. She took a long time to clean her plate, scraping slowly, rinsing slowly. She didn’t want Khali to see the tears in her own eyes.
“I don’t know if I can,” she finally said.
“Black or red?” the nurse asked again.
All her life Darya had been developing a resistance to obligation of any kind. No one had taught her to; maybe the world had taught her to. People who set off bio-bombs did so out of a religious obligation to hasten the apocalypse. The pictures she had seen of them did not reveal any delight in the prospect of the world ending—they tried to stay alive in the aftermath of their attacks only so that they could attack again.
Obligation was dangerous because it muddled the mind. Did she want to choose red to defy her mother or because she really wanted it? Did she want to choose black for her sister’s sake? How could she know what she really wanted with so many competing obligations—to herself, to her mother, to her sister, to her late father?
Darya remembered the Hearkener’s face as she listened to Darya’s father’s death song, distress and warmth competing for dominance, like she protected a secret, and Darya longed to understand it. It was that whisper of longing that made the decision for her.
“Black,” she said.
The nurse put the red cylinder aside and set the black cylinder on a tray next to the hospital bed. She wrapped rubber tubing around Darya’s arm to make the veins stand out. Darya felt her pulse in each one of her fingertips, and a harsh sting as the needle went in. The nurse removed the rubber tubing and, with a small smile, flipped the switch that would start the IV drip.
Darya was supposed to be awake for the procedure, so the doctors would know they hadn’t damaged her brain while inserting the implant. But she wouldn’t remember any of it, thanks to whatever was in the IV bag, and she was grateful. She didn’t want to remember them peeling back her scalp and drilling into her skull and inserting things into her temporal lobe, the part of the brain that processed sound.
A haze of passing images was all she retained to remind her that time had passed. Gradually she became aware of someone sitting in front of her, but it looked like she was hidden behind a white film. Then a face surfaced, and it was Khali’s. Her mouth was moving, but Darya couldn’t hear her. There was something over her ears.
Khali covered her eyes momentarily, as if chastising herself, and then took out a pad of paper and a pen. On it, she wrote, They don’t want you to hear anyone yet. Said it would be too overwhelming. Keep the ear covers on. How do you feel?
Darya’s head throbbed, especially over the right side, where the implant was. Other than that, she just felt heavy, like she could drop right through the mattress.
She didn’t want to try to explain all that to Khali, so she just put her thumb up and tried to smile, though she was sure it looked more like a grimace. Even her cheeks were heavy.
Khali’s eyes were wet. She scribbled another note on the pad:
Thank you.
Darya knew what Khali was thanking her for. If she hadn’t been so tired, she might have tried to say that she had not made her choice for Khali, had not made it for their mother—that she wasn’t even sure she wanted to hear her mother’s song, despite what she had chosen. But soon the weight collected behind her eyes, dragging her back to sleep.
She woke up later to dark skies showing between the blinds and a nurse peering at the incision in her scalp. They had buzzed some of her hair—eight square inches of it, in fact. She had demanded to know the exact amount. Another thing her mother had told her: a woman’s hair is the most beautiful part of her.
Darya’s mother had had beautiful hair when she was younger, a reddish brown that shone like a penny in sunlight. It had come down to the middle of her back, incorrigibly wavy—no matter how hard she tried to straighten it, it refused to stay that way. Darya had often thought that it was a shame that neither she nor Khali had inherited her mother’s hair.
It was a strange thing, but in the moments right before she fully woke, a memory of her mother had come to mind. It had been during one of her mother’s sober streaks. Darya had come home from school for spring break, and her mother had been restored—one month sober, rosy-cheeked, smart, pleasant. She and Khali had been making cake batter in the kitchen as Darya’s neighbor nailed boards on all the windows, and her mother had been singing in a thin soprano.
“Sing with me!” her mother had said. “You have a beautiful voice, Darya.”
She had started on a song that Darya knew, and though Darya had felt that this woman was a stranger, she could not help but join in. She had made up a harmony on the spot, slipping her lower voice beneath her mother’s, and tears—happy ones—had come into her mother’s eyes.
“Beautiful,” she had said.
That was the week Darya chose violin as her third instrument—every Hearkener needed to be proficient in three—even though her fingertips were too soft for the strings, and she had trouble holding her fingers in tension for so long. She chose it not because she liked it, but because it was challenging, because she knew bearing through the pain would result in greater joy.
The nurse checking the incision site noticed that Darya was awake, and she smiled. She said something Darya couldn’t hear, thanks to the glorified earmuffs she still wore. The nurse removed her rubber gloves and tossed them into a nearby trash can. Darya was finally awake enough to look around—she was in a large room full of beds, with curtains separating each one. She could only see the toes of the man next to her.
A stack of books stood on the bedside table—some of Khali’s favorites and some of her own. Darya slid one of Khali’s from the stack and started to read, propping herself up on the pillows.
About an hour later, Khali walked into the room, dabbing at one of her eyes with a handkerchief. Her face was discolored—she had obviously been crying. My face looks like raw hamburger when I cry, Khali used to say. It’s so embarrassing. I can never hide it.
Khali clutched a phone in her right hand, the one without the handkerchief. Her grip was so tight it looked like she was about to crack the battery in half with her fingernails.
“What?” Darya said. She could feel the word vibrating in her throat, but she had no idea how loudly she had spoken. Khali didn’t shush her, so she assumed it hadn’t been that loud.
Khali picked up the notebook and pencil resting next to the stack of books, and started to write.
Mom’s request for a liver transplant was denied.
Darya nodded. Obviously. They didn’t give new livers to alcoholics.
So I had her transferred here, so she’ll be close to us. She’s in room 3128.
Darya wanted her mother to be as far away as possible.
She looks awful.
Khali stared at her, wide-eyed, waiting. Waiting for what? Darya wondered, but it was a silly question. She knew what Khali was waiting for: an offer, I’ll go record her death song for you.
But Darya didn’t offer. She took the pad of paper from her sister’s hands and scribbled, Okay. Thanks for telling me.
It was midnight. Khali had left hours ago,
right after Darya wrote back to her, but not in a huff—that was not Khali’s way. She always made sure to smile when she said good-bye.
Darya put her feet over one side of the bed and let them dangle for a moment before touching them to the tile. It was cold, or her feet were warm from being buried under blankets for so long. She stretched her arms over her head and felt her back crack and pop, though she didn’t hear it. The noise blockers were still over her ears.
She walked into the bathroom and looked at her reflection. What she saw shocked her. She had not expected the implant to transform her the way it had. The black veins sprawled across her temple, arching over her eyebrow and down to her cheekbone. She turned her head to see how far back the dye had traveled—it stretched over her scalp as far as the bandage that covered the incision site. Soon her hair would grow over it.
She touched the layer of fuzz that was already growing in. It would grow back faster than normal hair, she knew—the nurse had told her, with a wink, that she had put some hair-regrowing salve on it, the kind they used for vain men and cancer patients. Looking at her reflection, Darya didn’t think she would have minded keeping the shaved portion for a while. It made her look tough, just like the implant dye.
She made sure the back of her gown was tied tightly, slipped her shoes on, and walked down the hallway. At the end of it was a large waiting room that looked out over the city. The hospital was one of the taller buildings in this part of Minneapolis, so she would be able to see more than usual.
She shuffled down the hallway, her head aching, but not enough to stop her. In one corner of the waiting room, by the television screen, were what looked like a brother and sister. The sister was rocking back and forth, her hands pressed between her knees. Both stared at the television but were not really watching it.
Standing near the window on the other end of the room was a young man with the same ear covers she wore, but his whole head was buzzed instead of just eight inches of it. When he looked to the side, she recognized him as Christopher Marshall.